Miller: These hot dogs can take a piece of your heart

They have the tiniest of legs and floppiest of ears and greatest of nicknames.

We say greatest because what could possibly be better than a moniker that includes the word wiener?

Yes, loyal readers, it's that time of year again, time for our annual column on the Wienerschnitzel Wiener Nationals, an endeavor so compelling we are moved each July – National Hot Dog Month, by the way – to write about athletes who race roughly three inches off the ground.

On Saturday , Los Alamitos Race Course once again is where the turf meets the girth.

But this yearly gathering of long odds and long backs isn't just about little legs churning and big ears bouncing. It's also about the humans behind those dogs, the owners who speak for the athletes who can't.

"They take a piece of your heart," Miranda Libres says. "They own a piece of your heart. Whenever they're gone, they take that part with them. Right now, I can't say that my heart is completely full. It's basically missing a little chip off of it."

That chip has a name, Boo. In December, two days before Christmas, Boo was killed in a car accident on the I-5 Freeway, an accident that resulted in Libres and her fiancé, Juan Flores, hanging upside down in their flipped car.

Boo apparently was thrown from the vehicle, dying after breaking her neck. The accident left Libres with scars on her face and elsewhere, too. It was more than four months before she and Flores were ready to adopt another dachshund.

"It was really an emotional time for us," she says, "because we love our dogs probably as much as people love their children."

They had owned Boo for nearly four years, since she was 7 weeks old and weighed just a single pound. Boo also left behind Sully, Libres' other dachshund.

"It took us a bit to be able to have another dog," says Libres, who lives in San Clemente. "It's difficult opening up your heart to another animal after something that tragic happens."

Just about the time Libres determined she was ready, two friends sent her text messages about a dachshund, a rescue dog, who was about to become available.

Flynn, the story goes, had been found wandering the streets. One of Libres' friends discovered the dog on Craigslist, where a posting offered him for $68.

The friends – and the dachshunds – met in Huntington Beach. At the end of the meeting, Libres left with Flynn, who had proved himself a worthy playmate for Sully and successor to Boo.

"As soon as I saw him and saw that he wasn't a barking dog and that he wasn't aggressive toward people or other dogs," Libres says, "I knew he was going to be perfect."

On Saturday, Flynn will be one of the rookie competitors in the Wiener Nationals, which lead into the 2013 finals in San Diego.

The track will be full of dogs and dog owners and, frankly, it will be difficult to tell which one is the more loyal group.

If you aren't a dog person, you probably don't understand what possesses someone to give their hound a Facebook page or a Twitter account. You probably also wouldn't get why an otherwise seemingly sane individual would dress up a dachshund in a bikini and take photos.

All of that happens, though. All of that and a whole lot more, as the most basic of Internet searches will confirm. According to the American Kennel Club, dachshunds are the 10th-most popular dog breed, proof that having stature isn't necessary related to actual height.

"I've convinced people who don't like dachshunds, because my dogs are so great, to like dachshunds," Libres says. "They are the most affectionate, loyal, funny dogs. They have so much spunk. They're just ... their little legs running ... their big ears ... you just look in their eyes and it's, 'Oh, my gosh. How could I not love you?'"

The runners Saturday will include dogs who answer to Barbara Bush, Gretzky and Frankie Federer, a dachshund named after, somewhat inexplicably, a tennis player. Then again, naming your dog after a former First Lady isn't exactly standard procedure.

Like we said, if you aren't a dog lover, a lot of this can seem as reasonable as a face tattoo.

"We're all pretty much obsessed with these dogs," Libres says. "We'll do almost anything for them. They become part of you. They make you the person you are."

In some cases, these small dogs can even fill a big hole, a big hole in a place as significant as someone's heart.

To understand why that matters, you don't have to be a dog lover. Or even a dog person. You only have to be a person, one who can appreciate the importance of feeling as complete as possible.